Queen Mab
by palomino333
Summary: Cole did have a thing for blondes, after all.


This amounts to a combination of a lucid dream featuring Cole, and listening to "Feel Good Inc." by Gorillaz too many times. If I made Alma or Gladys a Mary-Sue, I apologize for that. I also apologize if Marie comes off as a bit of a shrew in this; my intention was to show that her priorities were different from her husband's, even as early in the game as Patrol. Also, I apologize if the time skips are too jarring.

I'm trying to watch name dropping in my fanfics, but I think the play in question was appropriate to the game's context, especially concerning Cole and Elsa. The in-text proverb is of Japanese origin. Stefan and Cole's conversation was the most difficult part of this story to write, as it was not easy to nail down the former's character.

* * *

"Wait, stop! Hey, hey, Jimmy! Get back here!" The adolescent sped across the front lawn, his arms outstretched.

The young boy paid him no mind, dashing across the neatly cut grass, exclaiming, "My ball! My ball!" The faded blue and red ball in question bounced once off the sidewalk before rolling to a halt in the middle of the street. Jimmy leapt from the sidewalk to the road in a single bound, ignoring the roar of an approaching car motor in his ears. He knew what his big brother, Roger, would say if he caught him by his waist, hoisting him into the air, and away from the ball. The ball didn't matter; it was replaceable, unlike Jimmy.

But he was wrong! This ball was special; Jimmy didn't care how faded it was, because this was the first toy he could remember receiving as a birthday gift. Should it be eliminated, that semblance of a milestone in his life would effectively be erased. But Jimmy neither fathomed nor cared about that angle; all that mattered was his favorite toy was about to get pulverized by an oncoming car.

Cole slammed hard on the brake, bracing himself for the jerk that pitched him slightly forward over the steering wheel, his teeth clicking together. No second impact, no sound of a soft body hitting the grill of the car came. Rather, much to his relief, the little boy illuminated in the headlights of his car picked up the faded ball he had been chasing to hug tightly to himself. A moment after, a taller and older boy, most likely his brother, sped over to him. With shaking hands, he grabbed the little one to hug tight to him, backing off of the road, and onto the sidewalk. Closing his eyes, he kissed the top of the bewildered child's head before exclaiming, "Thanks, mister!"

Cole gave a slight wave, and took off again, though not without feeling a slight dropping sensation in the pit of his stomach. He didn't wish to consider what would have happened, had he stopped a moment too late.

Casting his blue eyes down from the rearview mirror, he glanced at the clock dial. Eight thirty, those kids were out a little late. He sighed in disappointment, knowing that he wouldn't have much time to spend with Wanda and Gwen before it was time for the girls to go to bed. Wanda had kept him up late last night, the difficulty of her mathematics homework condemning her to the dining room table, her legs sticking to the wood of the chair upon which she sat, and her right hand clinging tight a half-spent pencil with a dulled point, the paper beneath it covered in eraser marks and lead smears. The bottom of the side of her hand was stained a dull gray by the pencil's lead.

One hand soothingly placed on her shoulder, Cole gently directed her with his index finger, unrelenting in his encouragement despite his daughter's growing frustration. The content was elementary literally and figuratively, but while he was more than happy to provide assistance, he also backed off with it. She wouldn't learn otherwise.

The pencil dropped on its side, and Wanda shut her eyes, hanging her head in shame. "I can't do it." Her left hand clenched into a fist.

"Of course you can," he replied warmly, kneeling down beside her, "Wanda, you're almost done, just two more problems, and you can go play."

She shook her head. "They get harder as they go on, and I've been stuck on this one forever." She sniffed, her fist rubbing at her eye. The beginning of a sob sounded through her next words. "I'm just too stupid for this!"

Cole stood slightly to pull her into a warm hug. "Oh honey, come here."

Wanda put a hand against her father's chest, her moist cheek darkening his uniform shirt. He hadn't had time to change, arriving home after a shift that had stretched toward the evening, and the study session had taken the better part of an hour and a half. Stroking her hair, he comforted, "You know that's not true."

Keeping her gaze on the table, she whined, "It is! The other girls say it is!"

Cole set his jaw at that. Somewhere in the back of his mind, he had known that something like this would happen eventually. Wanda was the older of his daughters, and it was around the age when the children generally did begin to find conflict in each other. Daddy could keep the streets safe, but he couldn't shield her from mean words. Keeping his tone gentle, he asked, "Now, who told you that?"

Wanda looked down at the table, and Cole tucked a strand of her dark brown hair behind her ear. "Wanda Evelyn Phelps, look at me when I'm talking to you," he instructed firmly.

She raised her head to look at him, her blue eyes rimmed by puffy red skin. Cole's breath caught in his throat at the pitiful sight. Rational thinking told him that it was silly, that she was crying over nothing; those girls would probably not see her again once their required time within the school system had concluded. Emotion, however, threatened to override it. He couldn't help but feel utterly powerless to see her cry.

Her lips trembled for a few moments before she answered, "Gloria Tenker, Carolyn Mathers, and Hazel Norval." She lowered her eyes before replying, "I told Miss Kinsey, but Hazel started to cry and say that I was just making up things to be mean. Then Gloria started to cry, too, and Miss Kinsey told me that she was going to call Mommy if I did something like that again."

Making a mental note to give Miss Kinsey a telephone call after putting Wanda to bed, Cole reached out, and tilted up her chin with his fingers. "Honey, what those girls said to you was wrong. You aren't stupid, not at all." He extended his thumb to wipe the tears away from her eyes. "You are a very beautiful, very kind, and above all, very smart little girl. Those girls just can't see it."

Wanda's eyes settled on his badge for a moment. "Is that because they're bad?"

Cole released too late what a sort of rabbit hole he had fallen into, but bit the bullet anyway. He had to somehow steer this back to a more mundane conversation about mathematics. "No, Wanda, it's not."

"But they do bad things!" She insisted.

"People do good and bad things. I don't think your playing with Mommy's makeup, and trying to say Gwen did it, was a good thing, now was it?" Cole prodded, his eyebrow raised.

She looked away in embarrassment with a tiny "no."

"People choose to do good and bad things," he explained, "And what those girls chose to do was wrong."

"But bad people, they do bad things all the time!" Wanda exclaimed, accidentally derailing the conversation.

Cole latched onto the unwittingly offered life line by putting his hand to his badge. "That's why I stop them." With a smile, he guided her back to her homework. "You can do this, kiddo. I know you can."

The street sign indicating the turn glowed in Cole's headlights. He didn't wish to tell Wanda, but it was in fact her mother that would be meeting with Miss Kinsey Monday afternoon, as he would be on the beat at that time. While Marie knew all the necessary facts from his second hand account, he couldn't help but feel disappointed, as she hadn't been present during the conversation, instead playing Frisbee with Gwen in the backyard. It couldn't be helped, however.

The warm night air drifted into the car through the window, the lawns of the homes populated here and there by people walking their dogs, neighbors enjoying the good weather, and smokers out for a drag. A few groups of teenagers appeared here and there, with pairs of young lovers comprising an even smaller percentage of pedestrians.

Cole couldn't help but smile a little at the activity occurring around him. While other men and women of his age flocked to the city for excitement, he much preferred the peace of this growing suburban lifestyle. It gave him something to protect, he surmised, glancing back up at the rearview mirror. On occasion, he had looked over his shoulder to the backseat upon leaving the station, though as to why, he couldn't say. He could chock it up to awareness, but it felt more along the line of paranoia, when further appraised.

A cold shiver drifted down his back, culminating in the bullet-hole shaped scar. No, he knew exactly why he checked, despite Sheldon being long gone from his life. The ghostly image of him, decked out in battle gear, pistol in hand, helmet on head, and that utterly disgusted look on his face, stared back at him from the middle back seat. Cole stared back quietly at him, waiting for the gun to lower from its upright position, for him to try and finish the job, whether it was out of desire for justice, or obedience to the medic's creed. He had to put the sick dog out of his misery, after all.

Cole slipped one hand from the wheel to lay against the side of his thigh, near the gun at his belt. The problem with him, however, was that, sick or not, he had a bit of an issue with death itself. Courtney's eyes glinted at him in the guise of a cat, the pistol dropping to his lap before he faded away. Cole slowly placed his hand back upon the wheel, squeezing it for a few moments before relaxing his grip.

Taking his eyes off of the rearview mirror, Cole caught sight of a teenage girl walking alone past a few homes, electric lights and television sets glowing through them. Her blonde hair, tied back in a loose ponytail, hung down limp behind her, free strands trailing beside her eyes. She sported a white coat, its black buttons closed, and her black skirt trailing out beneath it to her knees. The tiredness of her face drew his attention, as did her graceless gait. She stumbled slightly, her shoes scraping against the sidewalk, her legs wobbling as if she was too tired to fully focus upon placing one foot in front of the other. Bags were under her gray eyes, which, by contrast, darted back and forth, indicating a sense of remaining alertness.

Cole slowed to a halt, and called out the window, "Do you need some help, miss?"

The girl jerked to a stop, and glanced across the road at him. "Sir?"

Leaning forward out of the window for her to more prominently see him, he explained, "I am an officer of the law."

She glanced off toward the stretch of road beyond her before turning back to nod, dropping her shoulders with a sigh. "Yes, officer, thanks."

Cole gestured to the passenger side door, and leaned back into the car.

As the young girl crossed the road, he took note of the fact that she still paused to glance in opposing directions before doing so, though she did stumble once. It seemed to indicate more tiredness than lack of sobriety, and he gauged her to be between the ages of fourteen and sixteen.

"Thanks again, Officer—"

"Phelps, Cole Phelps," he supplied as she buckled her seatbelt, "Do you live around here, Miss—?"

"Gladys Ripley," she replied, "I do, but, well…" She bit her lip, glancing out the window.

"Miss Ripley, your parents must be worried about you," Cole began gently, "If you could just give me your address, I could take you home."

Gladys bent her knee, allowing Cole to notice the discoloration of a fresh scrape, which was just beginning to scab over. She scratched at the side of it. "I can give you my uncle's address," she began evasively.

"Miss Ripley." She glanced up at him as he pressed down on the gas, and edged the car to the side of the street before shifting it into the parking gear. Placing the side of his arm against the steering wheel, he twisted around to get a better look at her. "Is there something you're not telling me?"

"No, well, I mean, it's not anything bad," Gladys closed her eyes, and continued, "Okay, I wanted to go to Griffith Park tonight to see the stars, so I went with a few friends into the city. It was going okay until the group started split up. One of the guys had some reefer on him, said he scored it from his brother, and two of the girls went off with him. Then about three of us got bored, and wanted to go see a flick, or something," she waved her hand as a euphemism, "That left Trudy and me, and she didn't want to stay very long, either. She got on the first cable car down out of the two of us. I had to wait because it was crowded. By the time I got down to the lower platform in the next one, though, she was gone."

"'Not anything bad?'" Cole repeated back to her in suspicion as another car passed by.

Gladys sighed. "I don't know where Trudy went off to, and I was so mad that I got left again, I assumed that she went home, or went shopping. Trudy's like that; she does what she wants to when she wants to, but she never really does anything stupid."

"So how did you end up here?" Cole asked, choosing to question her on the auxiliary story elements later.

"I called home on the payphone at the park, and asked Mom if Dad could take me home after explaining what happened." Gladys turned away from Cole at that, the tips of her fingers placed on the glass window, her face reflected in its surface. Squeezing her eyes shut, she explained, "She said that it was my fault I was stuck there because I was a lousy friend. I didn't want to have fun like everyone else did," pausing slightly, she added as an aside, "Oh, I didn't tell her about the reefer, but I told her Trudy went home."

"What did your father say?" Cole asked in concern.

She shrugged. "Mom hung up on me then. She's on the phone a lot, anyway, so I figured that if I called home again, she'd just pick up." Looking back over her shoulder at him, she added, "I mean, I get that I'm a square for just looking at the stars, but I think that was a little mean. I just think space is neat, y'know? I mean, the story of how Mr. Tombaugh discovered Pluto is so intriguing!"

"Miss Ripley." Cole shook his head to indicate that she was getting off-topic.

"Oh, sorry." Turning around to face him, she continued, "Well, I did bring pocket money with me to the city, so I guess I wasn't that much of a stick in the mud to forget what Friday night in the city meant," with a sigh, she muttered, "Though I do wish the others would have just given me a little more time to enjoy the stars first. I called my uncle's house, and my aunt said I could stay the night if I wanted to, but my uncle was working late. I hopped on a bus back to the suburbs, and walked from there. That's where you found me."

"Can you give me your uncle's address?" Cole asked, drawing his notebook from his pocket.

"Sure. I'm not in trouble, am I?" She asked, drawing in on herself. "It was mean of me to not think of Trudy, and I'm sorry about that. If I you her name, could you find out if she got home all right?"

"To the best of my ability," he responded curtly, taking down the address as she supplied the information, "And no, you are not in trouble."

"Trudy Wirz. She's sixteen like me." Gladys waved a hand. "Please, I don't wanna talk anymore about my friends. I'm mad, but I don't wanna be a snitch. You're not gonna make me tell you who had the reefer, are you?"

Writing down Gladys' name and age, he shook his head. "I'll let it slide for tonight, as it's probably long gone by now. However, I would advise you to seek other company."

Ripley looked away. "It's complicated."

He'd already figured as much. Shifting back into gear, he took off. Gladys leaned back in her seat and tilted her head to the side, her eyes closed. Cole found himself at a loss. While he could theoretically attempt to charge her mother on child endangerment, the evidence was still circumstantial, and layered with too many factors. Not to mention that he was off-duty now. Still, she was lucky to have gotten back to her home town safe, and her mother was lucky that he wasn't knocking on her door right now. Then there was the fact that Gladys looked so very tired. It could have been from the stress of returning home alone, or from just a very long week at school, and as for the scrape, she could have just fallen on the sidewalk.

His notion was confirmed by glancing down at her upturned palm, which sported a fresh scab on the side from where she had presumably caught herself during her fall, as well as some traces of dirt on the bottom of her coat.

A patrol car sat in the driveway of the relative's home, the officers most likely inside already. He supposed the unnamed aunt had gotten a little nervous upon waiting too long for her niece, though still, he didn't approve of her waiting so long before acting. Once again, he figured the girl beside him wasn't telling him the entire story.

Killing the engine, he raised his voice. "Miss Ripley."

She stirred slightly in her sleep.

"Miss Ripley," he repeated.

She yawned, cracking an eye open. Blinking a few times, she looked about in bewilderment before better registering her surroundings. "Oh, Officer Phelps!"

He smiled reassuringly. "Come on, let's get you inside."

Answering his short raps upon the door was a rather short red-haired woman, most likely of marriage relation, as opposed to blood, her more petite form heavily contrasting her niece's taller one. Cole's appearance barely fazed her, as she acknowledged him with a mere nod, though her expression was clearly relieved. "Gladys!" Clasping her hands, she exclaimed, "Your father's been worried sick about you, dear!"

"Dad's here?" She asked in surprise.

The woman nodded, her expression falling to a bitter sort. "He's not happy with your mother, to put it in simple terms. It took me a couple of calls to your house to get through to him, and you were already long gone by then." She shrugged. "I told him you'd come home on your own, but he insisted on calling the police."

"Oh, he needn't have done that," Gladys agreed, indicating Cole with her elbow, "Though this nice officer did find me."

"Phelps, ma'am," he greeted, shaking her hand once, "I managed to find your niece by chance, as I was off-duty. I'll need to give my statement to the other officers on the premises. Could I please come in?"

"Yes, of course," she replied, leading the way inside.

XXXXXX

"What a strange family," Marie commented, setting Cole's plate before him at the kitchen table. He'd unfortunately arrived too late, the girls already asleep. It was all right, he chided himself, there was always tomorrow morning.

"That's putting it lightly," he muttered, rubbing his temples, "The kid seems all right, at least."

Marie smiled, heading over to the sink to lean back against it, her hands placed on either side of it. "Maybe she'll find someone who wants to watch the stars with her someday."

"Maybe," he replied, though without adding the fact that that hinged on whether or not her home life created further harm for her. He'd taken care to mention to Schreyer and McGill, the two officers on duty, to put in word to keep an eye on Gladys in the future. He didn't want to upset Marie with the dirty details.

"What happened to your hand?" He asked, gesturing toward it with his fork.

Lifting it in the air, she inspected her broken nails. "Oh sorry, I must have forgotten to file these down today. I pulled out the sink stand in the bathroom to clean behind it, but I accidentally pushed it back in a few inches with my hip when I was cleaning." She winced. "It wasn't pleasant, to say the least."

"Are you all right?"

She smiled. "I'm fine, thank you. It was my own fault." She narrowed her eyes in a sultry manner, and she shifted her weight slightly against the sink, "But if you'd like to kiss it better…"

He smirked. "I was already thinking in that manner when you mentioned your hips."

She chuckled, placing her hands upon them. "My hero, come home to me in his uniform, no less. I must be the luckiest gal in the world."

Cole nearly choked on his drink at that. Setting it down, he composed himself with a more sobering subject. "Marie, could I ask you a question?"

"Yes?" She asked, a tinge of humor in her tone from their previous conversation. Her smile faded off her face when he set his fork down next to his half-finished meal.

"You ever wonder if we're raising our kids the right way?"

She sighed. "That girl really bothered you, didn't she?"

"Wouldn't you have been if you found her?" He asked rhetorically, "No, it's not just her. Wanda's growing fast, and Gwen isn't too far behind."

"Wanda's also a hard worker, and has two parents that care about her. After all, what am I going to this conference on Monday for? The same goes for Gwen, though I wish you'd sometimes spend a little more time with her. She asked me yesterday why Daddy doesn't dance with her anymore."

Cole sighed. "I'm sorry. I'll spend time with her tomorrow when I can."

She frowned. "I just wish Wanda could talk so easily with me. It's hard for me to get any words out of her these days."

"She's having trouble in school, and you've been spending more of your time with Gwen as of late," Cole pointed out, raising a finger after each fact.

"She's gotten older, Cole. She's starting to talk back to me," Marie insisted.

"She's six years old. That hardly qualifies as an indicator of deviant behavior," he defended, beginning to lose his patience.

Marie looked away from him, folding her arms. "I guess I just don't have the right approach. She lets you help her with her homework."

"Because I offered to help," he explained, "Why didn't you?"

"I told you last night, I tried to," she responded defensively, hugging herself tighter, "Wanda kept snipping at me that I wasn't helping her at all, or that it was hopeless because she couldn't get it."

He closed his eyes to keep from rolling them toward the ceiling. "She was frustrated, and she said the same things to me. Why do you think it took us so long to get the work done last night?"

"I understand that, Cole, but I couldn't very well do that while I had Gwen tugging on my skirt, now, could I?" She asked pointedly.

A few moments of silence passed between them. The image of his wife's makeup case, open with its multi-colored powders dotting her dresser, formed in Cole's mind. He broke the silence with a sigh. "Marie, Wanda loves you very much. She may not show it in the way that you want, but she honestly does."

Her face softened, her arms falling to her sides. "You might be able to see it, but I can't. You're a cop; you're good at that kind of thing. I'm just in the dark." She turned away from him to look out the window into the backyard.

Cole stood from the table to walk the short distance over to her. She sighed in contentment as he wound his arms about her waist, hugging her to him. The clothesline outside swung in the breeze. "That's my world right there," she murmured, "A clothesline, a picket fence, the children's toys, and flowerbeds. But your world, it's exciting, it's dark, it's something so raw that I don't have the stomach for anymore, even at this young age."

"Nonsense," Cole muttered, kissing her shoulder affectionately.

"I'm afraid, you know that," she murmured wistfully, meeting his eyes in the window, "I was afraid that Hirohito would take you from me once." She winced, shaking her head, "God, Cole, the nightmares I used to have of what could have happened to you."

"He didn't, that's over," he replied with finality, though a rather cynical voice within him asked as to whether he would keep kidding himself on that second part.

"But now, it's almost as if you're fighting against the entire city. The alcoholics, the addicts, the murderers, the thieves, the cheap women…" She let out a shuddering breath, "There are days when I wonder as to whether I'll see you pull back in the driveway again."

"Marie, hold up your hand." She did so, holding up her right one. Cole blinked in surprise at the wrong hand being held up, but realized he didn't specify. "The other." The diamond ring, held into place by the wedding ring beneath, caught the light in the kitchen, and gave off a slight sparkle. Cole released his own left hand from her waist to trail it up to her upheld fingers, and clasp it with his.

XXXXXX

Marie's breaths were soft as she slept, her long dark hair in beautiful disarray against the white pillows of their bed. Cole at times wished he could see it that way more often, but there simply weren't enough hours in the day for this sort of recreation. Her stomach was particularly ticklish, he'd remembered, though she'd disliked him touching it after her cesarean that had resulted in the birth of Gwen. Her self-consciousness had caused her to conceal the scar from him with an upheld hand on more than one occasion, despite his protests. Tonight, however, he'd managed to stop such an episode by kissing the scar before she could stop him. How she thought he saw such a thing as ugly, he couldn't understand.

The ones she ran her fingers down his back over, however, were a different story. Leaning up against the windowsill, clad in his undershirt and boxers, Cole felt as if the moon was beating down upon them for whoever wished to see. The clock just beyond Marie's head read 1:30 a.m.

Somewhere back in time, another girl's hands had clasped at his back, many, in fact. Cole smiled to himself. It helped to be near one of the girls' schools, though he figured that his experiences were rather vanilla in comparison to what the other young men of his youth had bragged about doing. Not that he was one to complain; remembering well the disheveled guys who stumbled into the common room around two in the room, smelling of sex, alcohol, and heaven only knew what else, with someone always on hand to ask, "So, how was she?"

He turned his gaze toward the moon as the girls slowly faded away from him into the darkness in a quiet parade. There went his first kiss, farewell his first actual relationship, farewell his childhood friend, from whom he'd drifted away. But one turned back. It wasn't Marie; Marie came after. Marie was by his side. This girl, however, stared back at him from the moon, her eyes blue, long blonde hair framing her face.

The dress she'd worn that night had been a soft white, he remembered, hugging her curves. "Like Jean Harlow," she'd declared in excitement, clasping his hand. The band had played mostly slow songs that night at the club, the sentimentalists basking in their love of it. She lay her head against his shoulder.

"Where's home for you?" He'd asked, kissing the side of her head as they swayed on the dance floor.

She smiled. "I ride my bike past your campus, so it can't be too far off."

He drew out, guiding her into a spin. "Your accent, though. I haven't heard it around here."

"Martha's Vineyard," she replied as he caught her.

"A bit of a way off, isn't it?"

She smiled, walking her fingers up his shoulder, "All the more reason I'm happy to be in your arms tonight, love."

Cole clasped her hand, bringing it down between them. "Who are you, really?"

Thunder cracked in the background, illuminating the tears on her face as she screamed, "I'm nobody!"

Sinking down to her knees, her black coat fanned out beneath her, she sobbed into her gloved hands, her unkempt hair frizzed out by the humidity in the air. Under the covered bridge, Cole leaned against the wall in shock at her outburst before placing a hand on her shoulder. Palm trees swayed in the heavy wind, groaning ominously in the shadows.

Gasping a deep breath, she looked up at him. "My sister, she and I are nobodies! We always were!"

Two girls separated at birth, fathers unknown, carried to opposite ends of the country, much in the semblance of a fairy tale, one of the Atlantic, and one of the Pacific. No, that wasn't the full story. Here on her knees before him was what remained of Alma, raised by an aunt she'd thought to be her mother in Martha's Vineyard. She'd come all this way seeking her sister, Sylvia. Only, Sylvia hadn't been there to greet her here, having passed away in an accident involving the tram.

"Your sister didn't feel anything," the coroner reassured Alma, the jolting halt of the tram sending Sylvia flying toward the back wall, effectively splitting her head open. They'd managed to stitch it up in time for the funeral, Alma's only touch to the lost girl being through her cold fingers. The mother was, naturally, absent, auditioning for some two-bit part, from the last Alma had heard.

When she'd ridden her bike past his campus, it was to find work, or to find answers for her sister's whereabouts, she had told him. She was a corrupting force, after all, aging at twenty-three, but something so beautiful certainly was, and she was so very lonely.

"Why me?" He'd asked her, standing beneath a movie theater marquee, the bright colors tracing patterns over his face.

Alma sighed. "That kindness you have, Cole. I can see it on your face every time I look at you." She smiled sadly as she turned toward him, cupping his cheek with her one hand. He blushed at the contact. "It's like you stepped out of a story, my prince."

It was that same kindness that allowed him to kneel down to the pavement on that stormy night, and help her to stand. She pushed him back against the wall in a hard kiss, to which he reacted with a surprised moan. Cole saw stars for a moment before scrambling for purchase, his tongue slipping into her mouth.

Alma groaned, falling back upon the bed sheets of her rather pathetically-sized apartment bed. How they'd managed to make it all that way back without tearing each other's clothes off, he hadn't known, especially considering the size of his erection when she had at last unzipped his pants. Somewhere in the back of his mind, he laughed at the idea of him following her home like a lost puppy. "Can I keep him?" She'd beg her landlord. The joke was lost, however, when she effectively destroyed what was left of his sense by running her fingers down his back to the hair just above his rear end.

Before the scars, before the fire, before the deaths, before the name, before the guilt, before the blame, before the shame. Flesh on flesh, he'd remembered the audible crack when her head hit the headboard. He reached out to place his hand to top of her head, running his hand through her hair. Alma smiled softly, stroking his arm with fondness. "You're such a good boy."

They'd nearly fallen out of bed a couple of times, though more so when they were attempting to cover themselves with the top sheet, their legs too entangled with the bed clothes, as well as each other, for it to be easy. "Cole, you listen to me," she whispered, a sob punctuating her words. Grasping her bare shoulder, he tugged her closer to him, causing the two to sweat from the combined body heat. Her eyeliner and mascara had already run, leaving long, black splashes down the front of her face. "You marry a nice girl. You marry somebody."

"Please," he implored, his voice shaking slightly, though it was more from emotion, or the adrenaline from his first time in the sack, he wasn't sure, "Alma, stop calling yourself a nobody."

She turned her eyes away from him, slipping out of his arms to stand. "I need to clean my face off."

Cole noted quietly that the scars on her thighs wound around to the back of her legs, as well, and his breath caught in his throat at a rather cruel-looking, long pink tear traced diagonally over the small of her back. He turned away to look at clock, seeing that it was a little past midnight. Alma wouldn't tell him the stories behind the scars. Alma was like that.

Water splashed in the sink onto Cole's hands. He ran his fingers, soaked in the cold liquid, over his face and eyes. His wife continued to dream on back in their adjoining bedroom, subconsciously hugging her pillow to her, thinking that it was Cole.

"Saru mo ki kara ochiru," even monkeys fall from trees, he'd heard once, but it was honestly nothing to him now. Wanda fell out of the tree last night, but she'd managed to make it back up, the only physical casualty being the length of her pencil from the amount of tries it had taken for her to get the math correct.

Hank smiled at him from over his shoulder, causing him to sink to his knees upon the bathroom tile, his head buried in his arms. It was late, he had to go to sleep, he'd feel better in the morning, he chided himself, but it wasn't enough to make him stand. Alma reappeared to him in her white dress, though this time, she was not alone. Hank was on her arm, clad in his dress uniform, and the two danced before him. Two complete strangers happy together, he'd conjured that image as a comfort to himself.

What happened to Alma, he wasn't sure, and the passing of time, compounded by the amount of his coursework, had diminished his care for the subject. Her bike slowly vanished from the border to the campus grounds, and when he'd at last met Marie, from his mind completely. Still, when he'd picked out her engagement ring, Alma whispered in his mind, "Marry a good girl."

Cole stood slowly, taking note of the slight gap from where Marie had pulled the stand out. His image was effectively trapped between two worlds in the mirror. He looked healthy and clean, albeit his hair was a little tussled, and his lips were a little red from his wife sucking on them, but he was otherwise nondescript. But the shadows in his eyes stood out to him, clear as day, his expression grim. Drive the streets of Los Angeles, walk the block with ghosts. He didn't want to look anymore, turning away to open the door out.

XXXXXX

The sound of smooth jazz music greeted Cole as he stepped out of the men's room, the morning sunrise spilling gold onto the diner's floor and tables. Fans whirled lazily overhead. His waitress, carrying an empty tray in one hand, walked past him with a smile.

Stefan set down his coffee. "And here I was, trying to wait like a nice guy for you. Food's cold by now."

"Uh-huh," he replied noncommittally, taking note of the steam rising from their plates.

Stefan took the liberty to dig into his scrambled eggs as Cole slid into his side of the booth. Phelps glanced down at his own plate, pointedly ignoring the sausage in favor of the toast. "What's the matter? Aren't you hungry?" Stefan inquired.

Cole nodded his head before taking a sip of his coffee. That was the truth, though, he thought to himself as he glanced over at the sausage, it was half of it. Shoot a guy dead, then go to breakfast. He wasn't sure if he'd ever get used to it, Ira's sobbing expression stopping before him like a snapshot. Resolving to pick up the toast, he took a bite out of it.

Stefan raised an eyebrow. "Thinking about Leroy, aren't you?"

"Among other things," he responded simply, taking care to be discreet in the public setting by keeping his voice down, "I wasn't expecting for Mrs. Pattison to be shot in front of us."

Stefan shrugged. "She was mouthing off in front of a guy with a loaded gun. I'm not justifying what happened to her, but that wasn't the smartest move."

He couldn't disagree with that. Picking up his knife and fork, he cut into the meat. "She said they'd met on a furlough, and married."

"Feeling nostalgic, Cole?" His partner jabbed.

He threw him a dirty look over the table. "Cute."

Stefan grinned at that, picking up his fork again. "Just checking to make sure you're awake over there."

He dropped his gaze back down at his plate, he muttered, "Call me old-fashioned, but I just don't understand how it could work, to marry another person whom you've only just known for a few days."

"Thought you were a fan of Shakespeare?" Stefan asked after swallowing a mouthful of home fries, "The girls back in high school were always mooning over Romeo and Juliet. And what, didn't those two kids get married after seeing each other two times, or something?"

"Oh, you remembered," he replied with a slight smile.

Stefan returned it. "Come on, kid, I care for you at least a little."

"The thing about Romeo and Juliet," Cole began, pushing aside his parsley with his knife, "was that it wasn't intended as the epitome of romantic. It's tragic, though in multiple respects, let alone the suicide at the end. The parents and the children both hold the blame for it. The children are reckless and foolish like Lorna and Lester were, living completely in the now without considering the consequences of their actions." He sniffed, the corner of his mouth turning up, "Something Leroy also failed to learn."

"So, what'd Romeo's old man do wrong?" Stefan asked, leaning back against the cushion, and draping his arm over it. Cole figured he only half-cared, but he was still eager to continue with his point, the nostalgia for his college days drawing him back.

"Did you even see the play?" Cole asked, crooking an eyebrow.

He shrugged. "Slept through it, really. My girl at the time didn't even seem to notice."

"Okay," reaching over, he picked up a packet of sugar to tear it open, dumping the white powder into his drink, "basically, the parents of both the children didn't allow them to be children. Their objectively meaningless feud was so important to them that they kept the two away from each other. The more Romeo and Juliet were separated, the more they desired to see each other," picking up his spoon, he began to stir his coffee, "You can imagine the result."

"Another knucklehead and his dame to scrape off the pavement," Stefan replied with a hint of dark humor, "Two new blocks of text in the obituaries, and better press for the LAPD."

"Exactly," Cole agreed, mentally brushing past the notion of what that could entail for his daughters as they grew older. The play wasn't one of his favorites to begin with, and he hadn't been expecting to speak with Bekowsky, of all people, about it.

"Guess it worked out in a way, then," his partner replied, continuing along with the dark humor, "Lorna and her boys are miserable together now."

"Never saw you as a romantic, Stefan," Cole replied, chuckling.

Stefan smirked. "I have my moments."

As Cole focused his full attention upon his breakfast, Stefan glanced over at the bar, the backs of a few guys seated there facing them. He still had that date with Daphne tonight at the flicks. He doubted she'd stick around for longer than a couple of lays, but at least they could be somewhat enjoyable.

The stagnant image, however, was interrupted by movement, a blonde girl with her hair in a bun under a blue hat passing by, her hands clasping her purse tight to her person. Her eyes were closed, her head down in what seemed like shame or dejection. Her lip quivered once as she continued on toward the door out, her eyes opening to reveal they were green in color as she pushed it open.

The smile gone from his face, Stefan picked up his fork again.

XXXXXX

"About time you showed up," Officer Bekowsky greeted Detective Sergeant Leary and Sergeant Hobbes, the headlights of their car illuminating his form against what remained of the intact guard rail. Yellow sawhorses marked off the crime scene, and black tire marks heavily marred the highway, turning to heavy cuts into the dirt. Down in the drainage ditch, the car lay on its roof, the flashlight of Bekowsky's partner shining sporadically around it. Accompanying it were a few flashes of a crime scene photographer's camera. Leary could make out the figure of Carruthers kneeling to inspect the damage in the shifting light.

While Hobbes unceremoniously nudged the officer out of the way to further inspect the tire marks, and damage to the rail, Leary inquired, "What've we got here, Bekowsky?"

Indicating the car with a wave of his flashlight, he replied, "Dame took a tumble over the edge. If there were any witnesses, we weren't able to find them. The door's been jimmied from the inside, so she probably tried to get out."

Leary nodded his head, and picked his way carefully down. He gasped in surprise as he slid a few feet due to a misplaced step. His fingers scraped along the dirt in a frantic attempt to catch himself.

The woman was suspended upside down by her seat belt, her blue eyes open wide, with blood trickling down her pale face. The windshield was smashed from her head hitting it, and the windows were broken.

"Cause of death?" Leary asked, kneeling down beside the suspended body, its arms limp, the seat belt violently torn, most likely from her being thrown about by the car, thrashing to get out of it, or a combination of the two. Her hands, suspended over her head, were heavily scratched and torn, the nails broken short like chips of ice. Pieces of broken glass tore her dark clothing, and sliced into her cleavage, her crooked black bra strap exposed by the torn fabric. Her neck bore particularly a gruesome abrasion, the glass half-stuck in far enough to draw blood, which dribbled down both sides of her neck. Blood, mingled with saliva, formed a ring about her mouth. A scarlet bubble of blood, a sick parody of one blown by a child's chewing gum, ballooned out of her mouth.

"Blunt force trauma, and subsequent bleeding, not to mention asphyxiation from the neck wound," Carruthers replied, "Bashing her head into the glass didn't kill her, but the remaining two did."

The parted lips left the woman in a perpetual scream. Her eyeliner, caked on heavily in the imitation of a raccoon, ran at the sides, as if she was crying, most likely from the pain.

Circling the car with his notepad out, Gordon carefully took note of the car's dark paint job, and white interior. "Caldwell, point your flashlight at the license plate," he ordered.

"Got it." The yellow plate lit up immediately, the numbers and letters visible, despite it being caked with dirt. Leary knelt to write, before standing with a nod of his head. The car matched the description of the stolen vehicle. The owner wasn't going to be happy, and neither was the as of yet unidentified girl's family.


End file.
